When the amateurs couldn’t figure out how to rescue an injured bald eagle, they called in an expert.

Working in deep snow and below-freezing temperatures Monday near Eleven Mile State Park by Lake George, Colorado Parks and Wildlife volunteer Joe Kraudelt and a team of concerned neighbors used a fishing net, a plastic dog kennel and a sled to get the raptor out of a 2-foot-wide and 20-foot-long drainage culvert.

“We were concerned that it was going to be hypothermic and maybe dead by the time we got there, because it got down below zero that night, but it was still alive in the culvert,” said Kraudelt, a 30-year CPW volunteer.

“We worked for about three hours, because it was a real long culvert, and got it to come up to one end and then got one of the guys to kind of slither down in there with a net and drop the net over it. He pulled it out, and then he and I got it untangled from the net and into a dog kennel.”

They pulled the eagle through a half-mile of Park County forest on a sled.

A man walking his dog Sunday afternoon in Eleven Mile Canyon below the dam and park spotted the eagle “sitting on an unusually low branch,” a CPW news release says. He told a neighbor, who tried to catch the bird but only scared it into the culvert.

Word eventually reached Kraudelt, 67, who drove out to the canyon first thing Monday.

“I’m always very cautious with a big raptor like this,” Kraudelt said. “I have picked up numerous hawks that were injured and also a golden eagle, and they’re usually much more intense and aggressive. This one, actually, by the time we got to it, I think was hypothermic, because it was alert but not real aggressive. So when we pulled it out of this culvert, two of us were able to grab it and cut its talon loose from the net that we had put over it and get it into a dog crate without it trying to fight us too much.”

After the rescue, Kraudelt brought the eagle to Catamount Wildlife Center in Woodland Park, where it was found to have a bruised wing and a claw missing from one talon. Then he picked it up Wednesday morning and brought it to the Wildlife and Nature Discovery Center’s raptor campus in Pueblo for rehabilitation.

“They’re gonna assess it and make sure it’s able to fly, and then when they deem that it’s ready to go, I’ll go back down there, pick it up, and we’ll bring it back up here and turn it loose where we found it,” Kraudelt said.

The bird is expected to make a full recovery.

“Being that close to a bald eagle is breathtaking, let me tell you,” Kraudelt said. “And this was a big, mature bird. He wasn’t a little juvenile one.”

Kraudelt recently was honored by CPW’s Southeast Region for his volunteer work with the agency, including serving on the county Bear Aware team and frequently transporting injured wildlife to rehabilitation facilities, the release says.

“This is a great example of the dedicated work of Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s volunteers,” Tim Kroening, a CPW wildlife officer in Teller County who works closely with Kraudelt, said in the release. “They care so deeply for the wildlife and will go out in terrible weather on weekends and holidays to help perform a rescue like this. Our agency, and the wildlife of Colorado, are so fortunate to have committed volunteers like Joe.”